I have loved you for 15 years!: Miguel Part IX

Posted on 24 October 2003

disclaimer:
Alright, I just got home. Those pics of me and him were taken within the last couple of hours and I look like hell. But I do want to say this again: I had NO INTENTION of finding him to hook up again. While I agree that it looks and smells like a duck, it’s not a duck. While familiarity may breed ground, it’s been 10 YEARS! I’m not that desperate or lonely to look up an ex just because I’m single. Let’s say that other revelations that came out today were also not planned. Just because it smells like a duck, quacks like a duck, it may not necessarily be a duck.

Just, please, don’t judge. Just support me no matter what, okay?

———-

Within the last couple of days, I came to realization of a few things.
I thought to myself, I’m nearly 32 years old. I’m single. I have a string of relationships that have failed behind and while there is some that would have failed, why wasn’t I married yet? Why was I overly picky about the guys I dated and then it dawned on me. Really, it was quite clear.

It was because of Miguel.
Everything just suddenly made fucking SENSE!
Same thing with why I made my name on the internet. It was not that I did not necessarily care per se BUT that I wanted him to find me.
I waited for 10 fucking years.
Jesus. Yah, I got on with life, dated etc but that part inside of me was always waiting for him to show up at my door (and he’s the type to do it).
I’m a sentimental old romantic aren’t I?

I promised myself that no matter what, I was not going to spill this out to him today. It just wasn’t my place to say it. It wasn’t. So I tried not to say it.

But i told him all of this, all of this and more.

———-

He was good on the tattoos. Didn’t say a peep. Dawned on me earlier this afternoon that he hadn’t said a damned word. I asked. “I got over it.” He said. Woah. I was impressed. He means what he says and he says what he means. This was a new one for me. I looked at him with new eyes.
It was never really about the damn tattoos. It was about me being back in his life again, like gangbusters.
———-

I don’t know how it all began, and in a way I do. I know we were coming back from Chicago and were in MI and we were talking about US again. That whole concept of us. The GF had called a few times during the day, and i had curled up in my seat reading my book, not saying a peep. They didn’t sound like bf/gf, to me. We talked more about them and I said:

“look, i’m saying this objectively and it may not come out that way because of my interest in it, I admire that you want to make your relationship with Sarah work BUT there comes a time and a place where you have to make yourself happy. I did that with paul. I worked my ass off because I did not WANT to fail at that relationship and after a while, I lost who I was. I was living through him to make it work and while he did change, it wasn’t working out that way. It never does.”

He said “I never thought about that way.”

Later on, he kept saying “I need to feel you out. I need to know who you are.”
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you know.”
“Oh, well what do you mean by that?”
“Look, you can’t keep seeing me in GR, even as ‘friends’ and then if it doesn’t work out, you can’t go ‘oh well! I have Sarah in MO.”
“DAMN GIRL! You are devious! I never thought of that. Damn.” He said quietly, “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You already have.”

———-

Then I started crying.

———-

A torrent opened within him out came the things that I never expected to hear ever in my lifetime.

I was his “little fabrage egg” (exact words) when he was with me. I was not in his world, I was pristine and proper and had no idea to what was going on. He kept me at a distance when we were together because he didn’t want me involved in that world. My house and my arms were his safe haven. He wanted to protect me and at the same time, so much shit was going down that he needed to get his life together and keep emotional attachments at bay. He could be himself with me. The relationships that followed were all disposable, even the 7 year long one. There was no real committment. While he had not said it in so many words, I gathered he had been in love with me all these years.

“Don’t you see,” I said, “What this means?”
“Hrm?”
I explained about the relationships. I explained what they meant to me. Yes, I loved them, but it wasn’t the same. I was not in love with them, and probably never was.

“I’ve been in love with you for 15 years!!”

Yes Lisa, you don’t beat around the bush do you.

“Do you see now why I can’t be ‘just friends’ with you?”
“Yes, now it all makes sense why you were so cagey about it.”

Silence followed.

I sniffled.

“I wish I could put you and Sarah together so that you two would be the perfect girl. No one would get hurt. I just don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You already have.”

More tears followed.

I said something like this.
“I’ve been in love with you for 15 years. I knew about what was going on then and it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to be with YOU, to be loved by you. To be yours. Don’t you get it? I got tired of waiting for your ass. I had to find you.”

I said a lot more, but it’s all hazy now.

“I don’t deseve you or your love. It’s like going downstairs at Christmas morning, expecting one present and finding five. I’m a loser. Yah, I’ve cleaned up, I’m legit. I do my own thing. But everyone around me, is a facade. I’m the fat funny guy everyone likes. I can pick up and leave at a moments notice. Sarah? She’s disposable. They DONT KNOW ME like you know me. You are the only one who has known me before and after and when I’m with you, I feel I want to be a better man. I feel like I need to earn and make you worthy, for I am not. You need someone worthy of your love and I’m pond scum. I deal with pond scum. I have never had anyone tell me anything like this ever in my life. I don’t feel like I need to put up a facade. I can be myself around you. It’s not that it’s uncomfortable, because you and I have always been homies, it’s that it’s weird. In my head, it’s still 1989. Do you understand? You need to date a geek.”

“I”m almost 32 years old, do you NOT understand I know what I want and don’t want? That I’ve dated enough men to know who is worthy of me and who is not. I love you. Do you think I PLANNED on falling in love with a long-haired harely riding trucker?”

“I can’t believe I Just told you that. I have NEVER told anyone that before and I can’t believe I just voiced all of that to you, even though that is what I have always thought.”

I said nothing.

He held my hand while he drove.

———-

There was so much more that was said, so much more that I wish I could have written down and have it, but never did. Things were clicking in my head faster than I could count. The world seemed clearer and more concise. I told him, that if it didn’t work out between us, I was really okay with that. I tried. I was HIS white knight, came to save him, instead of being the white knight to everyone else. He replied that was true. He wants to be worthy of me and lead a better life. He was closing doors down to get rid of any last residual. He’s afraid of commitment, true committment because he knows that with everyone else, they are disposable. He loves them and he wants them safe and cared for, but he knows now I demand all of him. Something, that really, neither one of us really have done before.

He’s scared shitless and so am I.

———-

I had told him, a few days ago, that after I had ridden with him on Tuesday, I came out of the shower and smelt him in my apartment. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on and in this particular place in my apartment, his cologne still lingered EVEN THOUGH he did not wear any when he came over on Saturday night.

When we got back to his house, I ran upstairs and had to use his bathroom. His bottle of cologne was in the bathroom and I just picked up the bottle and smelled, smiling.

———-
I’ve created a monster.
he’s a closet geek. He’s hip to the lingo man. He told everyone that would care to listen how smart and talented I was and even before all these declarations of uh, love, I was invited to go to a party with him for his birthday which is coming up. Yah, he’s OLDER than me — go figure.He told everyone what I was doing with the camera and together we took over 200 pictures of today which I will put up later. He is anxious to learn more and know more about gadgets and is better educated than most people. HE LOVES TECHNOLOGY. I told him how I met paul and he thought that was cool and he wasn’t condescending about me shagging up with Paul via the Internet. I told him everything from what happened when I left MI in 1997 to the present. I told him about the world I had seen and what I had done and he did not question or make me feel like I made mistakes.

When we got to his house, he was expecting some parts for his Audi and UPS had left a note. This ended up with me looking at his computer again. I had sat next to him all day calling him “Captain” as we drove around and he sat next to me at the computer as I went to work calling me “Captain.”

“Don’t stop believing” by Journey came on digital radio and I said “Dance with me” — he said where? HERE? Yah I said, and I kicked my boots off. We swayed old school to the song and he said “lisa, this is not a slow song” “Shut the fuck up and dance with me!” I laughed. So we danced with my arms around his neck in his dining room to the song.
He pulled away.
I pulled back.
“Dance with me.”
1am in the morning and we are swaying old school, giggling, to Journey in his dining room.

He ran around the house taking pictures of things. I laughed at him as he ran around taking pictures of pictures. He dug up old OLD pics of him as a kid and when I first met him and my god, has time flown. I told him how I had shown his picture to an old friend of ours and how she had been ragging on me that I was going to be a biker bitch now. “You’ll never be a biker bitch, Lisa. I don’t WANT you to be.” We laughed.

———-
He asked me to stay the night, again. I demurely declined.

He’s taking his Audi in tomorrow to get worked on and asked me to follow him so that he could get back home. He hadn’t driven it in a week and he went out and started our cars and we stood awkwardly in his living room. We hugged. He pulled away — GODDAMNIT! (he said) You still smell the same!

As I was dropping him off, I turned off the lights and we sat in my warm car, our ass cheeks warmed from the seat heaters. He started babbling. “YOu don’t want to leave do you?” “I’m babbling aren’t I?” He smiled. He hugged me and it was a quirky little hug, “See you around? You got school and stuff. Work starting back up on monday.” “I get out at 4pm M,T,TH,F. I’m off on Wednesdays.” “Oh yah?” “Yah.”
“So, would you like to go see a movie with me?”
“Mmm… sure.”

———-

Friday (tomorrow? today?) I’m heading to my mom’s for the weekend. He’s heading to MO, preplanned, to hang out with Sarah. He told me the last few days that he doesn’t want to have sex with her. I told him he doesn’t have to do that, it’s HIS girlfriend. “I just no longer find her desirable.” “But you don’t HAVE to do that. I do understand.”

———-

I was his tumbleweed. He never expected me in a million years to show back up in his life and here I was, spent two days with him in his ‘tractor’ (not cab, i was wrong) spending 16 hour stretches with him and talking. So much was FUCKING SAID. So much that we never said in the past, so much that needed to be said NOW. We are adults now and it’s fresh, it’s new. It was something but there was all this energy going on then and now it’s clear sailing.

I told him I still had the tshirt he gave me when we first met, from his parent’s pizza place 15 years ago. The business is gone and his parents split up. I came home wondering where the damn shirt was, thinking it was in one of the million of boxes in my bedroom. It was piled, with the other shirts. I dug it out and it’s sitting in front me. It’s yellowing, with age. I hold it close to me and smile.

———-
We never kissed beyond Sunday night. We never had sex. As the guards came down and we became more in tune with each other, it was like our own little private club. Same as in the past. We were, ourselves with each other. No facades. No disposable lovers. No nothing. I can’t look at him without wanting to crawl into his skin. I would spend hours staring at him as he drove and he would look at me, wiggle his eyebrows and we would laugh. Every guy I had dated past him, all had parts of him. I never FUCKING knew that, until today. Everything I wanted in someone, was based off of him. How fucked is that? I told him that.

———-

I do feel stronger. I feel — more complete. More within myself. I know who I am now and I know what my future looks and if he can’t take the balls and dump the zero, than, well, I will live without him. It is his loss. I will be hurt, I will curse and I will scream and shake an angry fist at the sky but I will go on.

But, I love him.
I do.
I felt it in my heart and I felt things in the last few days I have not felt in a very long time.
I love him.